International Standard for Data Dissemination

In 1996, the International Monetary Fund introduced the "Special Standard for Data Dissemination", as a framework of indicators with definite specifications and dates, in order to improve the coverage, quality and updating of country data available for public access, improve the information underlying the operations of international financial markets and evaluate economic policies in general, thereby facilitating decision-making in the public and private sectors.

Egypt's Participation in the SDDS

Egypt was certified by the International Monetary Fund for the availability of data end expertise in January 2005, indicating that Egypt has met the requirements of SDDS. Egypt has become the 59th member in the world and the second Arab country after Tunisia on SDDS. A ministerial decree was issued to establish a committee composed from several entities to meet the requirements of the standard (Ministry of Planning, Central Bank, Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, Ministry of Finance). The Minister of Planning has been appointed as the national coordinator for Egypt, and has the powers required to meet the requirements of the standard through the relevant authorities.
Since 2005, Egypt has met the requirements of the IMF's SDDS, most importantly the timings of the publication and availability of economic and financial data. These data contain real sector accounts including national accounts (GDP at current and fixed prices distributed to activities), production index, labor market data, price index and fiscal sector data including government accounts, financial sector data, external sector data and population data. These data are published on the IMF website in accordance with a modular framework. The IMF produces periodic reports on the extent to which countries comply with the requirements of the SDDS. The agencies responsible for providing these data are the Ministry of Planning, which provides the national accounts and production index data, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, which provides the Labor market, price index and population data, the Ministry of Finance, which provides public finance data, the Central Bank, which provides the financial and bank sector data and shares with the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics in providing external sector data.  
The data published in accordance with this framework are quarterly data for the last available quarter and must be with a grace period of no more than three months, previous quarter data, rate of change,  responsible agency for preparing the data, and any observations relating to the published data.

International Standard for Data Dissemination>>